Ratigan Discusses Wikileaks Video, Observes Implications On US Rules Of Engagement And Foreign Response To US Actions
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
Dylan Ratigan is joined by Julian Assange, co-founder of Wikileaks, Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer, from the Center for Advance Defense Studies, Glen Greenwald, from Salon.com and Brett McGurk from the CFR, in discussing today’s must watch video. Assange states that the purpose of releasing these videos is to show how "modern aerial warfare is being done" and "to show the debasement and moral corruption of soldiers as a result of war." As pertains to the video, Julian states the obvious: if indeed the military believed him to be an insurgent, the wounded man should be interrogated and asked about what he was doing. The army’s desire is merely "to kill as many people as possible, to get as high a score as possible, and then brag about it to the rest of the troops." McGurk is laconic "this is a tragic, tragic video." Shaffer does a detailed analysis on the Rules of Engagement (Minimum Force and Capture and Interrogate being primary), especially when the engaging party on the US behalf is something that appears straight out of Call of Duty, and can be controlled by the same 19 year old joystick-happy day traders that gun the market day in and day out. Lastly Greenwald discusses the responsibility of the media to cover these kinds of events. As Glen notes, "Wikileaks is absolutely heroic, because this kind of footage is seen all the time in the Muslim world, about what we are doing over there, and what the effect of our missions are, but it is seen very rarely over here… This is far from uncommon…What do you think the people who this video and the family members who are surviving, are going to think about the U.S. over the next 2 or 3 decades."
Of course, anything that forces average America to put down its iPad for more than 5 minutes will be promptly ignored as there are much more critical games of scrabble to be won.
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